


Rebuild

by Lassarina



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-24
Updated: 2009-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rydia returns to Mist as an adult; it's so different than her childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebuild

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 15_minute_ficlets prompt #152, Gloomy.

She didn't remember the valley being this dark when she was younger. The village nestled between two mountain ranges, a border crossing between the vast green plains of Baron to the south and the desert territory nominally ruled by Damcyan to the north. It had never been a great player in world politics, just a simple village of simple people who raised their children and lived their lives in peace.

They also summoned creatures from the Underworld to defend themselves, but that was because they had to protect their village, and the call to summon was in their blood. They were linked to the summoned creatures in a way that defied explanation, and the bond was impossibe to ignore. So they summoned. Until the day that the King of Baron sent his two best warriors to destroy the village.

That day, the flames scouring the land clean had not been Ifrit's. They had destroyed the village rather than protecting it.

Standing now amid the ruins of Mist, Rydia could see the scars fire had left everywhere. She remembered the village as a bright place with neatly cobbled streets, white stone buildings, children playing in grassy yards and neat rows of flowers planted in front of the houses. She remembered how sometimes, just sometimes, a summoned chocobo might wander around for a while before returning to the Land of Summons, and she remembered the horrifying smell of her friends and family being burned alive, their piercing screams, the vicious crimson glow of magical flames.

The valley is sealed off now at the other end from the explosion of the Bomb Ring, and maybe that's why it seems dark. The mountains never seemed so tall and forbidding when she was a child. Even though the sun shone bright in the sky, the village was dark and gloomy, worse than the alien feel of the Underworld where there was no sun and all the light came from the liquid magma that stands in for the oceans. Soot stains blackened the few walls that still stood. The ground was bare where the grass had burned entirely away, and the cement holding the cobblestones together had cracked.

The sight of her ruined village blurred and shimmered as tears filled her eyes. The sunlight seemed to brighten through the watery lens, and one last time she saw her village as it used to be, full of light and life, scrubbed and polished until the stone gleamed. She blinked and tears ran down her face, clearing her vision so she saw Mist as it was, rather than as it had been.

She took a deep breath and pushed up the sleeves of her tunic. There was work to be done if Mist was ever again to be as it had been in her childhood, and just standing around wasn't going to accomplish it.


End file.
